Certain coastal cities transport municipal solid waste in barges for disposal of the waste in landfills. Additional coastal cities will be looking to this inexpensive method of transportation as available landfill sites become more distant. Barges are typically loaded at a "Marine Transfer Station" (MTS), which is an elevated pier (usually enclosed within a building) with arrangements for garbage trucks to dump their loads directly into a barge. A number of such operations are in place, the most extensive of which is the marine transfer station system in New York City.
In addition to the need to transport over longer distances, the necessity to recycle a large fraction of the waste stream is becoming more urgent. One recycling method is the reclamation of recyclable materials from the unsorted waste stream. Referred to as post collection recycling, these systems are emerging as a competitive method to recycle valuable materials and to reduce the amount of waste disposed of in landfills.
This invention combines a marine transfer station with a post collection recycling system and places the entire recycling and barge transfer operation on a floating structure.